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Lenny Kravitz’s Hero Uncle and Other Lesser Known American Heroes

Khalid Elhassan August 18, 2020 35 min

American Revolutionary War - United States — The British surrender at Yorktown. Library of Congress

20. A Hero in Peacetime

Marcelino Serna in old age. El Paso Herald Post

After recovering from his wounds, Marcelino Serna returned to America and settled in Texas, as that state’s most decorated WWI hero. He was naturalized as an American citizen in 1924, then got married and raised a family in El Paso, where he got a job in a packing company.

He eventually became a plumber in El Paso’s William Beaumont Army Medical Center, and worked there until his retirement in 1960. He died in 1992 at age 95, and was buried in El Paso’s Fort Bliss National Cemetery. In 1995, legislation was introduced in Congress, requesting that Serna finally be awarded a Medal of Honor. The bill was not passed, and to date, efforts to award Serna his just dues have gone nowhere.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.